The present invention is related generally to machines for mass terminating multi-conductor electrical cables used in electronic equipment, and more particularly, to an improved apparatus for discriminating individual wires of a cable to be terminated.
Conventional machines for mass terminating electronic cables do not include the capability for sorting individual wires to correctly match each wire with its respective terminal. Other operations, some of which employ special cable constructions to facilitate wire identification, must be used to sort and place the wires in the correct position to be terminated. In addition, any required continuity testing entails yet additional operations.
For example, some of the previous techniques for sorting wires utilized wires with color-coded insulation or other marking, or used flat cables with an inherent position reference to identify individual wires, or performed the termination prior to bundling the wires into cable form thus facilitating selection and matching to corresponding terminals of a connector. All of these methods required special construction or handling operations which add material and labor cost due to relatively low labor productivity. A further technique with cables formed of identically colored or marked wires is to perform individual continuity tests with each wire. This reduces material cost but adds significant labor and equipment costs. Low productivity due to the tediousness of the task and resulting fatigue also introduces additional cost and increases the burden on the quality assurance operations for the testing of completed cables.